Jugaaḍ is a non-conventional, frugal innovation, in Indian subcontinent. It also includes innovative fixes or a simple workaround, solutions that bend the rules, or resources that can be used in such a way. It is considered creative to make existing things work and create new things with meagre resources.
– Wikipedia
The Discourse on Jugaad
The modern discourse on Jugaad began in the late 70s and 80s in the wake of the Appropriate Technology (AT) movement worldwide and the euphoria of the post emergency Janata government in India.
Dr. P. K Sethi’s work on artificial limbs with the help of local artisans in Jaipur, Bindeshwar Pathak’s work on composting latrines which provided work to dalit worker at the same time ‘liberating’ them from manual scavenging in Patna, Madhu Sarin’s work on improved cook stoves reducing the drudgery of women working in a smoke-filled kitchen in Chandigarh were some well-known examples. Regional engineering colleges came up with centres of AT. The college in Prayag did some good work with solar cookers and Muruguppa Chettiar college did some good work with BG algae.
In recent times there is a huge deluge of information about bicycles and AT. One can create a gallery of 100 photographs of bicycles and livelihood. Many of them have been around for decades – like the knife grinder and the sugar candy machines. Some are patently illegal and extremely hazardous – like stealing coals from mines in 100 kg bags at night using bicycles!
A K N Reddy at IISc in Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad and NID Ahmedabad did some ‘theoretical’ work also.
Most of it was a bit ‘folksy’ and suffered from ‘orientalism’ – a kind of patronising attitude towards third world artisans. Some moaned and groaned about poor quality of work. Like one architect told me. He asked a carpenter in a village to come with his tools. The carpenter turned up with just one – Basula. It is a hammer and chisel combined in one tool. One can imagine him capable of taking on any kind of carpentry work, taking a lot of time and doing a rough and shoddy work.
A Critic of Jugaad
There was practically no cultural critic – understanding in terms of caste or a political economy critic – understanding in terms of contemporary capitalism.
There is clearly a class/caste division in jugaad. Jugaad belongs to artisans who belong to ‘Ved Bahya’ tradition of Hinduism and Muslim artisans. They have been denied access to learning Sanskrit – the traditional media for ‘shastras’ (formal learning) in India. So, there is no jugaad in grammar, linguistics, mathematics, music, medicines – all the fields belonging to Brahmins. On the other hand, we have no shastras on leather work, mud work – pottery and building, carpentry, iron work and so on.
Jugaad was not important in traditional societies. It has acquired importance in the ‘neo-colonial’ context. Here it is alienated labour without corresponding change of technology. The artisan has to serve a modern market with traditional methods of doing work and correspondingly very poor wages. So, he uses his feet as vice, mouth to hold part of the job while hands are busy doing work. The people who write about Jugaad, almost all of them upper caste/class persons, write admiringly about these feats of ingenuity! One woman in Chennai wrote about the mysterious mathematical abilities of a carpenter who calculated the volume of wood required to do a carpentry job mentally!
The Way Out
The long-term solution is of course a social transformation of Indian society. That is a subject beyond the scope of this small article. For what to do today, I will stick to the classic Communist adage:
Our short-term goal is to unionise all the working classes.
Our long-term goal is to achieve socialism.
My humble suggestion is that let us start with unionising the section of the artisans we are interested in. It is not a utopian solution. The classic example is the ‘Barbers’ Trade Union’. (I strongly recommend Mulk Raj Anand’s classic story with this title). The barbers in India traditionally visited the clients’ house and shaved or gave a haircut. They sat on the ground and carried a small bag with them. Even in the market place they carried their trade under a tree!
Today those barbers have practically vanished. Even in villages there are ‘Hair Cutting Saloons’ with barbers’ special chairs! And everywhere there are unions and rate cards!
Bicycle Mechanics’ Union
Bicycles in India are about 100 years old. Indian soldiers in WW I learned to use the ‘iron horse’ abroad and brought the knowledge home. Till then it was an upper-class phenomenon in Bombay, Calcutta and Shimla! However, the bicycles proliferated in India after independence when they began to be manufactured in India. The period of 1950 to 1990 was the golden era of the bicycle in India. It was a desired item of the young and an extremely useful transport for the adults. It was a prize possession of the family! Indian cities became bicycle towns.
The bicycle mechanic shop was very important because you could not afford to have a bicycle that was not functioning – puncture, brakes and chain cover rattling were common problems. The shop often doubled as a bicycle renting shop and it was a big attraction for the children because they did not own a cycle and were not allowed to use the adult bicycles at home. Most children learned how to cycle on a rented bicycle. The mechanic/shop owner thus was a respectable person!
Liberalisation changed all that slowly. The roads got congested due to scooters, motor bikes and cars. Now the attraction for the young was scooter/motor bike. The bicycle slowly lost prestige. The mechanic who was your father’s friend now was a merely poor mechanic! Things got worse with the availability of the smartphone. Today a smart phone costs the same or more than a roadster bicycle and everyone seems to have one. This has devalued the bicycle further.
Today in metros a bicycle mechanic cannot afford a place to have a shop. He is either a part of a shop that sells bicycles or has a little corner on the footpath alongside hawkers. He is a friend of hawkers because hawkers’ tricycles or 4 wheeled push carts are repaired by him. You won’t notice the ‘shop’ unless you are looking for it. Normally it is just a tin box chained to a pole nearby!
My suggestion is that we should help them to form a union of bicycle mechanics. Today in India they will be logically part of the Hawkers’ Union which is actually a fairly powerful union. We should begin with registering the union, printing Union membership cards and printing a rate card like the barbers’ union – rates for air, oiling and cleaning, checking brakes and minor repairs, puncture, replacing tubes/tires/seats and overhauling. And of course, we should have a charter of demand from Municipal Authorities about providing space and kiosks for mechanics shops and other amenities. Schools, railway stations, bus stops, market places should provide spaces for the bicycle parking and bicycle mechanics shops.
Increasing the income and social status is a first step towards increasing their skill levels. In India there are no courses to teach bicycle mechanics, though it should be a logical subject for Industrial Training Institutes. But one can persuade some private institutes to start. For example, institutes to repair radios and transistor radios started on their own in the sixties and seventies.
Future Possibilities
With the end of the era of fossil fuels, small towns and bicycles will again become important. So, the future for the bicycle and bicycle mechanics is bright.
T. Vijayendra (1943- ) was born in Mysore, grew up in Indore and went to IIT Kharagpur to get a B. Tech. in Electronics (1966). After a year’s stint at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, he got drawn into the whirlwind times of the late 60s. Since then, he has always been some kind of political-social activist. His brief for himself is the education of Left wing cadres, so he almost exclusively publishes in the Left wing journal Frontier, published from Kolkata. For the last few years, he also has been publishing in online journals like, Countercurrents and Mainstream. For the last twelve years, he has been active in the field of ‘Peak Oil’ and is a founder member of Peak Oil India and Ecologise. Since 2015, he has been involved in Ecologise Camps.
In 2016, he initiated Ecologise Hyderabad. Vijayendra has been a ‘dedicated’ cyclist all his life, meaning that he has never taken a driving license, nor driven a fossil fuel-based vehicle. 2017, was the Bicentenary year of the Bicycle and Ecologise Hyderabad, decided to celebrate it in a big way. They had a film show, bicycle rallies and meetings. They also ran a Face book page and published four books. Since then, he has been writing regularly about the bicycle in several journals and posting on bicycle Face book pages. The bicycle again got a boost during the pandemic and he wrote a series of articles for Countercurrents, Frontier Magazine and Mainstream Magazine.
Today, he divides his time between an organic farm at the foothills of the Western Ghats where he watches birds and writes fiction, and Hyderabad. He has published a book dealing with resource depletions, three books of essays, three collections of short stories, a novella, an autobiography and a book on the Transition Town Movement (with co-authors: Usha Rao and Shreekumar).
Email: [email protected]
